The Night Lights of Saigon

On our first full day in HCMC we woke up not knowing what time it was since the room we were in at the NY Kim Phuong Hotel (complete with photos of New York in each room) had no windows. We skipped the included pho breakfast (hard to believe one can skip a yummy pho breakfast) in favor of the banh cuon at modern looking joint down the block called “Wrap & Roll”.

Vietnam Airlines has an office next door so we went in to book tickets to Phu Quoc Island. We were told that tickets are nearly sold out and we managed to get the only 2 seats available this week and nothing for a return flight. Fortunately, there’s a ferry/bus combo as an alternative should we get “stuck” on the island.

We then changed our room at the hotel to one with a window and a view on the 9^th floor (out of 10) and a view of the Saigon River. Much better!

We went out to do some clothes shopping since most of our laundry was dirty. This brought us to 3 fancy shopping malls, the Saigon Tax Center, Saigon Center and Zen Plaza, all of which had international brand name stores and prices that equal or exceed those in the US. That seemed pretty ridiculous but at least the air conditioning was free. While exiting one of the malls I picked up a copy of the International Herald Tribune so I could check out some news about the election and the rest of the world. The man who was walking around selling the newspapers was around 50 years old and he recognized me as a fellow “South Vietnamese”. He spoke English well and told me that he was born and raised here in “Saigon”. Although many people of his age were around during the American War it’s somewhat rare to chat with them (in English) since most of the folks you meet are much younger than I am.

Our lunch was at Centro, a great little Italian-style café next to the Caravelle Hotel, with Jesse a friend who has been living and working in HCMC for two years. The cappuccino was the best we’ve had in SE Asia so far and the crostini and pasta were light and excellent.

For dinner we met with Bryan and Quan from a hot startup company called Vinagame, based in HCMC. They introduced us to some great specialties from Hue at a fairly new restaurant called Sen Hue (Hue Lotus) on Nguyen Hue Street, near our hotel. The city was alive at night and adorned with festive lights for both the Christian New Year as well as Tet, the Vietnamese New Year coming up in a few weeks. We ended the evening atop sipping wine at the rooftop lounge of the Caravelle Hotel, overlooking the rooftops of the city.

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